incubator-ooo-marketing mailing list archives

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Andrea Pescetti
<pescetti@openoffice.org> wrote:
> Rob Weir wrote:
>>
>> As for that list of domain names, there is no harm just redirecting
>> them all to the appropriate AOOo websites. But is it worth the
>> registrar expenses?
>
> It is probably worth it, because the registrar expenses are not very high
> (probably 5-10 USD per domain) but this shows commitment to end users.
>
Shows who? Most people directly involved in the project did not know
about these domains. I assume even fewer users know about them. So
no one really sees our commitment.
Maybe there is a way we can make users aware of this? Maybe a page on
our commitment to protect the trademarks and information on how users
can ensure that they are downloading "genuine OpenOffice"? We do have
technical means to protect users, with checksums, but this is not
something that an average user will understand.
But we should keep in mind that it is perfectly acceptable for someone
to take Apache OpenOffice, rebuild it, extend it, redistribute it on
another web site and even to sell it. The Apache license allows this.
But the product they sell would not be called "OpenOffice.org" use
the trademarked logo or use any name or logo that would be confused
with our trademarks,
> Of course this cannot be totally effective, since there are thousands of
> domain name variants that can be used and "squatted" for commercial purposes
> by people external to the project; but the issue of "unofficial" download
> sites is very important to users and, if the project manages to secure at
> least this symbolic list of domain names and redirect them to the official
> site, it shows that it cares about a problem that has nothing to do with
> development but that users perceive as important.
>
> Regards,
> Andrea.
>